Colorado...still no snow!

Winter Park Resort...at the base. They are making snow and grooming it to open more lifts and runs.

A beautiful sunset sky taken off of our deck.

The start of our first official snow...we ended up geting around 4 in.

A visit to Grand Lake...beautiful!

Matt at work...isn't he cute in his work vest!

16th Street Mall in Denver...a pedestrian street that is lined with stores and restaurants.

While in Denver, we found a new coffee shop, Daz Bog. It was yummy!

Matt having some tasty Russian brewed coffee!

Hello everyone! As you can see from the pictures above, we are having a good time out here. Colorado is still beautiful but we barely have any snow. They are saying that we should be getting snow starting tonight and lasting through the week, but we'll believe it when it happens. Our jobs are going well and we are still liking them. The people we work with are really nice. We tried out a church on Sunday night and it was nice. As soon as we get a lot of snow...we'll get pictures on the site.

Mike and Mary

One thing I forgot to mention in my last blog was about Mike and Mary Bartram. They are friends of ours that helped set us up with this house. They also traveled out here with us to move our stuff in and get settled. Anyway, they left on Friday morning. It was kind of sad because after they left, we were really on our own. We would like to share with everyone how grateful we are to them. They really did help us settle into our new neighborhood. They left us numbers to call around the community and introduced us to some people. Mary cooked us all of our meals while she was here and Mike helped get the house ready for our stuff. They helped stock our kitchen with some standard goods. We feel very blessed to be able to call them our friends. Thank you Mike and Mary!!!

Sightseeing in Grand County, CO

Hello everyone. Sorry I haven't blogged the last few days. We have moved up into our house and we don't have internet or cable yet. We are down here at Pete's house watching Broncos vs. Chiefs game so we have internet! The last few days have been busy with getting the house unpacked and seeing what there is to see in Grand County. Below are the great things we have found:
ALCO - awesome store that you can buy things cheaply! We bought cereal, a coffee maker, two trash cans, dishwashing detergent, toothpaste, and something else I can't think of...for $25!!! YES!
Rocky Mountain Coffee - Awesome local coffee...I would say that I would put it right up there with Starbucks...
Grand Lake - little resort town that is booming especially in the summer time. Mom and Barb...little stores that you will love!! Dad...perfect fishing place! It is a cute little town that has tons of little shops along their Main Street. It is about 25 miles from here.
City Market - every $100 you spend, you get 10 cents off per gallon on your gas!! Gas is 3.09 up here and 3.19 in some places. We already got our Thanksgiving turkey... 12lb for $8.00....yes...I love sales!
Safeway - another grocery shop that has fresh bread everyday at 5:00 p.m.
Church of the Eternal Hills - cute little mountain church that we went to this morning. Our neighbors, Stan and Susan, invited us to go with them. Super nice people and actually we met a few people that were from MO. There was one guy that went to SMS and was a part of Icthus 1988-1992. Crazy huh???
Pearl Dragon - we have found a Chinese restraunt up here in Granby!!! It isn't quite as good as Springfield chinese food, but comparable. YUM YUM
Little Chapel in Winter Park - we haven't actually visited this place yet, but we have been told that they serve dinner to mountain workers every other Friday (the Fridays we don't get paid). Isn't that awesome!!! I love free food.

Okay I think that is it... as you can tell we are learning the ropes around here and really starting to feel at home. I am loving living in a small town again where you see faces over and over again. I don't have the camera down here at this house so I can't put pictures up of Grand Lake. As soon as I have the pics on teh computer I will post them.
Hope all is well with everyone.

Mondays and Tuesdays!

Well...we have found out that we have Mondays and Tuesdays off during the season! YIPPEE! These will be perfect days to hit the slopes...no one will be there! Today we found out that I will be working in the Children's area and Matt will be working in the downstairs ticket office. It was a beautiful day out here today...in the lower 50's. We are suppose to get snow Sunday and Monday. We are hoping for it because the mountain is looking a littel bare. Copper is open already, so we are thinking we might go skiing on Monday or Tuesday. Things are going great out here and we are loving the people that we work with at the mountain. Hope everyone is doing well!

1st day of training

Today was great. We got to meet the people we will be working with throughout the season. They are a great group of people...all different ages and different backgrounds. Our boss, Nancy, is a really nice lady and easy to work with. We found out we get 50% off at the Starbucks at the mountain...I was so excited! It was beautiful here all day! We started to unpack our boxes and trying to get comfortable here in Colorado. I have learned that layers is a key here....lots of layers! Mike and Mary have been great and it has been nice having them here to help us get settled. Hope eveyone is doing great!

Colorado Bound!!!

Well...for those of you that do not know, Matt and I have moved out to Winter Park, Colorado for 6 months. We are working at the Winter Park mountain resort in the Guest Services department. We will be working together and we will be getting to ski for free!!! We are living in a sweet house that has an amazing view of the Continental Divide and you can look at it from our hot tub that is on the deck!! I am going to try to do better than I did when we are in Belgrade. I hope to keep everyone updated at least weekly if not daily. I have included a picture of the house that we are living in and the view that it has from the deck.

We actually arrived last night around midnight. However, even with a drive just to Colorado...we still have a story to tell. We left around 8:30 a.m. We had to take it slow because the truck that was loaned to us was pulling a trailer that was full of our stuff. So we were driving around 60 mph. I don't know if you have ever driven 60 through Kansas....but it makes it even more boring! We had Mike and Mary Bartram driving our Alero. We stopped at Denver for dinner to make sure the truck cooled off before we headed into the mountain. As we got off of I-70, to head to the pass, we noticed that cars were honking and flashing their lights at us. We had no idea why until we looked behind us and we saw smoke rolling out of the back of the truck covering the whole road! Then the truck started slowing down and we started losing gears. We were down to one gear...going about 15 mph. We pulled off at a bar's parking lot, called the Gold Dust in Empire, CO about an hour away from Winter Park. The truck was finished. Matt got out and saw that there was transmission fluid everywhere. It seemed that the transmission had blown a gasket or broke a seal. We called Mike and Mary and they came back to get us (they were only a few min. ahead of us). We really had no choice but to leave the truck and the trailer at the bar parking lot over night and get it figured out in the morning. Now the funny thing is that we had boxes and our mattresses in the bed of the truck. This means that anyone could have come and taken them very easily. Mike went and talked to the cop (they have one cop) to tell him what was going on. He told Mike, "I won't bother it." Mike smiled and replied, "I wasn't worried about you, it was the rest of the town." So we put all of the things in the car, into the cab of the truck, and took off for Winter Park. As Matt and I were laying in bed, he asked, "So what lesson do you think God is trying to teach us this time?" I tell you what....one day I really thing Matt and I are going to be able to write a book about our life.

To end the story, we got to meet our neighbor, Stan. He is an owner of a bank and a super nice guy. We explained the situation and he let us use his truck to go and get our stuff. We are going to have him and his wife up for dinner. Luckily, our stuff was still there and the owners of the bar were okay with us leaving the truck there until it could get towed. We called Steve, the owner of the truck, and luckily the transmission was still under warrenty. So we have gotten our stuff into the house and will start unpacking tomorrow after training.

I hope you have enjoyed our story. I am sure there is more to come!

We miss everyone and hope you will keep in touch either through email, this blog or phone. I guess you could use snail mail too! When we get our P.O. box, we'll get you our address.